File photos The author of New Zealand’s marriage equality bill has made it clear a section of the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act will be repealed to ensure “the sex, sexual orientation or gender identity of parties to a marriage is irrelevant to the legitimacy of the marriage”.The current law, by not allowing marriage between two people of the same sex, does not recognise an existing marriage if one of the partners transitions to become the same sex as their spouse. In effect the couple must divorce, creating significant emotional, personal, property and other conflicts. The relevant part of Louisa Wall's submission reads: 15. While not included in the Bill as currently drafted, I do wish to highlight further to my introductory speech, the need to make it clear that section 30(2) of the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 1995 is to be repealed. This was a matter raised when the Bill was drawn from the ballot and it is important it is addressed through this process. Currently section 30 of the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 1995 reads: 30 Registrar-General may add information to registration of birth (1) Subject to subsection (2), where there is deposited with the Registrar-General a declaration issued under section 28 or section 29 that relates to a person whose birth has been registered or is later registered, the Registrar-General shall, on payment of the prescribed fee (if any), include in the information relating to the birth recorded under this Act or a former Act information that the person is a person of the nominated sex. (2) The Registrar-General shall not at any time act under subsection (1) if the person concerned is then lawfully married to a person of the nominated sex." 16. Such a repeal would reflect that this Bill provides that marriage is not an institution that is limited to heterosexual couples and therefore when the Family Court is called upon to make declarations as to sex of an individual it would no longer be appropriate for the Registrar-General to not record a person's nominated sex merely because the person is lawfully married to a person of the nominated sex. With the passing of this Bill the sex, sexual orientation or gender identity of parties to a marriage is irrelevant to the legitimacy of the marriage. In my view the Bill should include specific reference to the repeal of section 30(2) of this Act as it is prescribed in very narrow terms and it would be unfair for the burden of effecting recognition of the obvious outcome of the Bill to fall on those who would be seeking to have their nominated sex recorded by the Registrar-General under the 1995 Act.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Thursday, 8th November 2012 - 10:24am